On Saturday, having watched the Wales rugby match at Temple Meads, I jumped straight on a train home so that I would be in time for a meeting in California. Skype does strange things to our lives. That meeting was of the Board of SFSFC, the parent corporation of the San José in 2018 WorldCon Bid, and its purpose was to appoint a prospective Chair who will run the convention should we win the bid.
Some of you may remember that (my) Kevin was Co-Chair of the last San José Worldcon. There’s no way he was doing it again. He has his Get Out of Worldcon Free Card now. However, we did end up with a Kevin. Kevin Roche, to be precise.
Many of you will know Kevin R as a brilliant costumer and masquerade organizer. He was Master of Ceremonies at the masquerade in Spokane this year. He’s also an experienced convention chair, including being co-chair of Westercon 66 in Sacramento in 2013. Also, he and his husband, Andrew Trembley, ran some of the best parties I have ever been to. Oh, and he has a great job too. Some of his science presentations at conventions involve playing with kit that allows you to move individual atoms around via a computer interface.
Of course there is a long way to go yet. We are running against New Orleans, which is one of my favorite tourist destinations. But should San José win I am sure that Kevin (Roche) will be a great con chair.
The official press release is on the SFSFC website. Anyone interested in the minutiae of WSFS politics should pop over to Kevin (Standlee)’s LiveJournal and comment there.
After I saw the news this morning, Doug and I were speculating on exactly HOW Kevin got Andy to say yes to this, remembering their comments in the wake of The Little Hoax That Could. (Doug’s theory was breakfast in bed every day between now and load-in.)
This one is planned.
That would make a difference, yes.
Kevin Roche will be an awesome director. I very very much want San Jose to win even more now.
K’shandra — one of the big lessons we learned with Westercon 66 was no more co-chairing together!
We did the Andy=bid chair/Kevin=con chair shuffle with Costume-Con 26, and that left the other free to support the active chair during their time in the spotlight.
This is not directly analogous, since I will have plenty of work to do leading up to the site selection vote whether we win or not, but in the event San Jose succeeds, we have the necessary marriage dynamic figured out a bit better now.
Thanks for giving my whimsical comment a serious answer, and one that makes total sense when you lay it out like that.